


every path you once trod now covered in moss

by nisakomi



Category: SEVENTEEN (Band)
Genre: Additional Warnings In Author's Note, Alternate Universe - 1930s, Alternate Universe - Historical, Explicit Sexual Content, Korea Under Japanese Rule, Korean Independence Movement, Loosely Inspired by The Age of Shadows, M/M, Second Sino-Japanese War, Shanghai - Freeform, Sichuan Opera
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-07-03
Updated: 2017-07-03
Packaged: 2018-11-22 16:44:12
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 12,727
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/11384247
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/nisakomi/pseuds/nisakomi
Summary: wonwoo reads old books and junhui changes face.





	every path you once trod now covered in moss

**Author's Note:**

>   
>  original notes (1 april 2017):  
> many thanks to the [check-in mods](https://twitter.com/book_of_wonhui/status/844999834478112769) for running this event and providing me a deadline that forced me to push out a fic about a concept i’ve always been interested in writing (变脸, a special type of sichuanese opera that remains shrouded in mystery to this day). this story is roughly set in 1930s shanghai, although i have played extensively with both historical and cultural accuracy. please keep in mind that the geosociopolitical climate of the time for most people was, in a word, difficult. 
> 
> additional notes (2 July 2017):  
> this fic was originally written for the first global wonhui fic/art collaboration, check-in. i am not proud of this work. it was written in an ungodly short amount of time (something like 12k in 7 hours) and received no editing. however, as the website hosting the original work has been closed to make way for the current/second/final [book of wonhui](https://book-of-wonhui.postype.com/) collaboration, i thought i would offer it here. in all honesty, i would post it under a sock but it already had my name attached to it months ago so i think that ship has sailed. 
> 
> **PLEASE BE WARNED** : this is NOT a happy or fluffy fic. i am not entirely sure how to warn for this story, so if there is any type of content you prefer to avoid, please send me a message first (in the comments, or through whatever links i have offered on my profile), and i will try my best let you know if this fic contains something that might give you a negative experience. 
> 
> further, although i usually try to research every nitty gritty detail i possibly can in my writing, due to time constraints such meticulousness was not possible for this story. as i mentioned in my original a/n, this fic probably does not follow historical/geographic/cultural accuracy. 
> 
> if i have not yet managed to warn you off, please proceed and hopefully?? (fingers crossed super tight here) enjoy.  
> 

 

_-_-_

 

“No, thank you. I’m only interested in one thing. The ginseng,” he said, indicating to the roots with his fingers and shaking his head at the grey-haired woman offering him pearly looking red dates with a gap-toothed smile. Wonwoo spoke slowly and enunciated each syllable, conscious of the accent he carried when he spoke Mandarin. “How much?”

The vendor named her price and busied herself with packaging Wonwoo’s purchase. He needed the presentation to be immaculate for it to serve its purpose as a gift to one of the board directors who oversaw after hours access to the docks.

“Chen _nainai_ , are you swindling foreigners again?”

Wonwoo peeled his gaze away from the ginseng and turned toward the direction the voice came from with some curiosity.

“What are you saying?! Of course not, of course not,” the old woman muttered, waving her hand at the owner of the voice, a young man around Wonwoo’s age, dressed in a Western-style suit and holding his hands in the pockets of his well-tailored dress pants.

“Then, is it because you know my mother that you ask half the price of me as you do of this man?” asked he, now standing within reaching distance of the herb and medicine stall. This close, Wonwoo could smell the subtle scent on him, light and clean and unlike any European cologne he had ever been exposed to. He was tall, as tall as Wonwoo and maybe even taller, with a high nose bridge and large double-lidded eyes. The smile he offered Mrs. Chen, who ran the store, lifted his cheeks and lined his mouth with mischief, the kind of smile handsome men always used when they knew they could get away with anything because of their good looks.

She quickly scowled back before doing an about face and turning her voice sweet and pleasant. “No, everyone gets the same price, of course.” The new price she lifted Wonwoo was, indeed, half the number she first gave him.

“Some for me, too, then, Chen _nainai_ , since I’m already here,” the man said. He wore his hair longer than the favoured style of the time, not long enough to be braided, but it sat in shaggy waves around one side of his face, and was pinned back behind his ear on the other side, in the way many women gelled their hair slick against their heads. Finally, he turned to Wonwoo with a gentler, less toothy smile. “Sorry,” the man said, in pitch perfect Korean. He licked his lips and Wonwoo couldn’t pull his eyes away from the man’s mouth. “We all make money our own ways, I suppose,”

“Are you Korean?” Wonwoo asked, stunned at hearing the familiar language in the Chinese Jilin Provincial Guild area, and coming from the mouth of someone who spoke such fluent Mandarin.

“Not since I last checked!” The man chirped. Then he started laughing to himself, slapping a hand to his stomach in a grossly exaggerated response to a joke that either wasn’t funny at all, or that Wonwoo didn’t understand.

The man paid for his purchase while Wonwoo stared, and bid him, once again in his truly native-sounding Korean, “Have a good day, sir.” With that, he twirled around, hair cascading around his neck as he turned, and continued down the road and out of sight.

 

 

 

 

“Really, Seungcheol, the opera?” Wonwoo muttered, settling into his seat across the table from his business associate, whose face was mostly hidden by a black hat. He sat with a tweed coat over his broad shoulders, and his eyes downcast until Wonwoo had gotten seated.

“You know how I feel about arranged meetings. The rowdier, the better. The more plausible deniability that we’re here simply to enjoy an event, also the better,” murmured the other quietly in their native Korean.

“Yes but, the opera? Really?” Wonwoo placed his own jacket over the back of his chair and rested his forearm on the red damask tablecloth, fingernail tapping against the gold silk brocade of pheasants and dragons.

Choi Seungcheol crossed his arms and leaned back in his seat. “Do you expect us to get into the cinemas? This isn’t like the opera you’re thinking of anyway. I think you’ll like it.”

Wonwoo couldn’t see any way in which he’d end up liking an opera but he was placated by the arrival of food. Tiny desserts piled into neat mounds on delicate porcelain plates and strong brewed tea by the pot both were brought to their table. Although the cheaper seats right up against the stage were lined without tables, businessmen and the wealthy filled the seats in the back, with clear views of the entire stage. Pairs of people sat on either side of circular tea tables, and many of the others seemed to be signing contracts of their own, a point to Seungcheol's thinking as it brought less attention to their own affairs.

“The date of our transaction has not changed,” Seungcheol said mildly, turning to pour a few droplets of the tea onto his silver bracelet before taking a sip. “You should expect the shipment a week tomorrow.”

“Fine. The storehouse is ready. And the issue of ship docking?” Wonwoo popped a square of red bean pastry into his mouth and chewed.

Seungcheol tilted his tea cup in Wonwoo’s direction, like a toast. “Your gift was well-received and much appreciated. Mingyu has taken care of some of the…smaller details, and taken on a local with rather specific expertise.”

“Can the local be trusted?”

“His loyalty was neither bought nor coerced, if that’s what you’re asking.”

“Just because he wasn’t bought doesn’t mean he can’t be bought by someone else,” Wonwoo pointed out, draining his teacup.

“No. But we have common interests, in this regard, and Mingyu has his reasoning. You needn’t concern yourself with the fine details. As long as we can get the products to you and you can continue to safely store them for the time being, then we will proceed. If that does not suit you, we will look for someone else who can do so.”

“You think you’ll find someone as good as me in this city? Good luck.” He scoffed.

Seungcheol regarded him with one raised eyebrow. “I am aware, and thus why we have sought your services. But if you have such worries…”

“Just don’t bring any undesirables to my doorstep,” Wonwoo muttered. “I told you, I don’t have some greater plan. I just want to be rich, happy, and very much alive.”

His life wishes, Wonwoo always thought, were simple ones. Ones that everyone shared. But not, apparently, by the opera performers at Sichuan House that evening.

Opera was not a good way to describe the spectacle.

The performance was like a circus. Flexible acrobats balanced on shaky poles to twist their backs into physics-defying shapes and stretch their legs the same way one might use their arms. It looked dangerous. A woman wearing a dress with supremely long green and pink sleeves spun circles and wicked fast patterns with her arms. All the while, singers in the troupe wailed loudly against the clang of a miniature gong and string music from something that looked a bit like an _haegeum_.

“I did warn that you might like it,” Seungcheol whispered, his voice accompanied by a quiet chuckle. Two actors were performing some kind of skit now that had the rest of the audience roaring in laughter, although Wonwoo barely understood most of it. Still, he was certain his face betrayed the dazzled way he felt, in awe of the people on stage in their brightly-coloured gowns and enormous head pieces, with thick stage make-up painting dramatic elements on their faces, sometimes simply to emphasize their features, other times to depict their characters with likelihoods of various animals and spirits.

“I’ve never seen anything like this before,” Wonwoo said, a little breathless.

Seungcheol hummed and they returned their attention to the stage, where a man in a pointy and feathered crown had entered to blow huge billowing gales of fire out toward the crowd. Wonwoo was sure he could feel the air in front of his face getting hotter each time.

“They should have saved the fire-breathing for the end,” Wonwoo said to Seungcheol, when the man had left and been replaced by another skit. “As a grand finale.”

“Don’t worry, my friend,” Seungcheol replied. “Many people come here specially to see the end.”

The last actor arrived on the stage, acting as a minister character while his minions made a mess of his affairs. Upon hearing the laughter, the actor’s head turned to the side. When his face turned back to the audience, the previously green face had been replaced entirely by a red, embarrassed looking design. Wonwoo gasped. “Did his face just change?”

“Yes,” Seungcheol said, smiling into his teacup.

“But he moved so quickly,” Wonwoo said.

Moments later, the actor’s face changed again, to the appearance of a sly fox, matching with the action of the plot, where the minister was hatching some sort of plan. This time, the actor didn’t move his head at all, but simply snapped his fingers in front of his face. The cloth of his sleeves billowed empty both before and after the transition.

“How is he doing that?”

“Isn’t that the question? That’s the magic of face changing,” Seungcheol said. “You can ask any chemist about how people blow fire, but the face changing technique is only passed down within knowledgeable families. A fiercely protected secret that pulls in patrons night after night." He took a sip of tea. “This performer is probably famous among the locals.”

And so the face changes went, sometimes with a quick jerk of his head, other times after passing his sleeve or a fan quickly in front of his face, each time fast and undetectable. Wonwoo came to anticipate the sound of the accompanying percussion with some excitement, which peaked in the final moments, when the actor changed their face ten times in the span of one minute.

“I know him!” Wonwoo said suddenly, when all the performers had lined up on stage for a final bow. The face changer was still in his enormous red gown and purple cape, but his face was exposed now, instead of covered by a mask with a dramatized expression of some emotion.

Seungcheol looked at him. “Who?”

“The face changer. I saw him three days ago buying the ginseng.”

“Well, you live in the same city, and he has to buy it somewhere, right?”

 

 

 

 

“I swear I know him and I’m not just saying this to get inside,” Wonwoo said with his hands up. The frustration was showing in his speech, which became faster and thickened with his accent as he got more agitated.

“Many people claim to ‘know someone’ but we cannot let just anyone in, especially not foreigners,” said the woman standing outside the bead curtain-covered door in a blue cheongsam. She regarded him the way a schoolteacher might look at a naughty child, and spoke with the open tones of a northerner, none of the southern Sichuan accent that might be implied by where they were.

“Alright, fine, I’ll wait outside, but can you just go and ask him. He’ll tell you he knows me.”

“I am not a messenger,” she complained, pulling back the beaded curtain. “Who shall I say is calling?”

“Er, well, he doesn’t know my name. But if you say ‘man buying ginseng’ I’m sure he’ll remember.”

She looked at him with a gaze of such heated hatred it could burn down a house, and then stepped inside after making sure Wonwoo wouldn’t follow her.

Minutes later, she returned, and beckoned him inside with visible distrust written on her face and in the way she crossed her arms. “He said he wasn’t expecting you but that you should be allowed in.” The ‘I’m watching you’ didn’t need to be stated out loud.

Wonwoo knocked on the door she indicated with some trepidation, and then turned the handle to let himself inside.

“Hello,” said the opera performer in Korean, nodding his head with amusement while Wonwoo took in the mess inside the dressing room. Huge swaths of fabric, some of which must have been part of the man’s stage costume, were strewn over a long wooden bench. Boxes were piled almost to the ceiling in one of the back corners. On the dressing table were dozens of pots of cosmetic paints and brushes.

Wonwoo hesitated for a moment, becoming unsure of himself. Knowing someone didn’t mean you had to talk to them. He could have lived with the knowledge that the man who saved him a pretty penny buying herbs was someone who performed face changing for a living and went on his merry way. But for some reason, he sought him out and tried to meet him.

“Can I help you?” the actor asked politely, staring at the dazed Wonwoo. He was perched on the edge of a small table, wearing a long grey changshan with his hair pinned up on the top of his head. A few flyaways encircled his face, which seemed calm, but was belied by the excessive fidgeting of his fingers around the comb in his hands.

“Sorry, I,” Wonwoo said, fumbling to find the words. “I mean, hello. I wanted to check that it was really you, that you’re the same person I saw three days ago.”

The man smiled, clutching the comb tighter, with some surety. “It was me. Moon Joonhwi, or Wen Junhui, depending on what language you’re using at the time I suppose. It’s nice to meet you?”

“I…right, it’s nice to meet you. I’m Jeon Wonwoo, some of the Chinese merchants call me Quan xiansheng. Could I just ask you something—”

“—Surely you’re not here to ask me how I change the faces,” the man named Junhui teased, tucking a strand of hair behind his ear and blinking at Wonwoo with his huge eyes.

“No,” Wonwoo said, and swallowed thickly. “It’s just, when we met the other day, you spoke in fluent Korean and Mandarin. I thought you’d be a diplomat, or something like that, maybe a wealthy traveller, or a trader otherwise. I never would have thought that you’d be a singer.”

Junhui burst out into raucous laughter, and unsuccessfully attempted to cover the sound with his hands. “Trust me, I didn’t think I’d become ‘a singer’ either. Korean, Mandarin, Cantonese, Sichuanese, Chongqing dialect, Shanghainese, a little English – I speak all of them really. Some better than others. But I’m not a traveller or government official of any kind, just,” here he waved his hand to indicate the building around them, “an opera performer whose troupe is temporarily stationed here.”

“Oh.”

“What about you? I told Xia _ahyi_ to let you in but we don’t really know each other, do we?”

“We don’t,” Wonwoo confirmed. “I apologize if I was out of line.”

Junhui shook his head. “I think I’d be curious too, if I were you.”

They were silent for an uncomfortably long time, during which Junhui observed Wonwoo with an open expression, and averted his eyes whenever Wonwoo looked back. At some point, certain that he had been caught, Junhui tore his eyes away to fixate on the wall behind Wonwoo, somewhat embarrassed. In his flustered state, he fumbled the comb, and it fell out of his hands, clattering and spinning forwards on the floor.

Both bent down to retrieve the object simultaneously, and their fingers crossed over the item’s ivory teeth. Wonwoo let go quickly, jolted by the brush of skin against skin, brief though the touch was, and stared down at his hand as he straightened, shocked by the tingling feeling that remained in his knuckles.

“I’m still curious,” Wonwoo announced abruptly, to a speechless Junhui. “How did you come to learn so many languages? And even if you can’t explain the secrets of face changing, what led you to become a singer here? I’d love to know.”

Junhui opened his mouth, prepared to begin answering Wonwoo’s questions.

“But not now,” Wonwoo interrupted. “I have some business to attend to still at home.” An awful excuse for ten in the evening. “Would you be willing to share your story some other time, over dinner perhaps?”

“Alright.” Junhui nodded tightly, tapping the top of his comb against his chin. “As long as you also tell me your own story.”

 

 

 

 

Dinner happened just over a week later. Wonwoo sent a car to pick Junhui up on the east side of the river, and began to wait outside the restaurant five minutes before the expected arrival time. He stood on his toes to keep from scuffing his leather shoes impatiently in the dirt, his nerves keeping him warm against the wind.

The place had a Korean owner, but the chef was trained in France, and the dishes offered were beautifully arranged renditions of European cuisine, with small portions, delicate plating, and heavy on the meat. Wonwoo kept the number on hand for the wealthier business contracts he had to impress, not for the food, but for the atmosphere. With its plush carpeting, impeccably dressed wait staff, and superior cleanliness, Le Bel Eté reeked of elite luxury, and exuded a sophistication that prevented it from becoming too gaudy.

Junhui, he supposed, was not a businessman who needed to be wined and dined. Not that Sichuan House was a place of squalor, but simply any fine restaurant would have sufficed for their stated purpose. And yet, Wonwoo had chosen the cream of the crop, feeling with sureness that he had to prove himself to make a point, and the best way to impress anyone was with fine dining. It was precisely because Wen Junhui was not a business partner that the impression made more of a difference. A friendship, unlike a business deal, was something that lasted a long time instead of ending with an exchange of goods.

He thought about the electric moment in the dressing room when their hands met. Well, friendship of a sort.

The car pulled around not long after, and Junhui opened the door for himself before the driver could get to it. He wore his hair sleeked back into a small, low ponytail, which left his neck uncovered. His broad shoulders filled out the shape of his suit to a T, creating a tapered silhouette that thinned at the waist. Wonwoo had a hard time deciding if Junhui looked more natural in this Western style or in the flowing changshan he wore in the Chinese quarter.

The menu items were selected for them well in advance after ascertaining no food allergies or other dietary restrictions. Each dish was carefully paired with one of the available wines, and brought out continually, with neither food nor drink ceasing once the meal had begun. A server unobtrusively arrived to fill their water glasses whenever low, and disappeared again as soon as the job was completed.

“Have you been here before?” Wonwoo asked, watching Junhui look around with the exact kind of marvel he had hoped for. Pristine white linens, high vaulted ceilings and complex chandeliers, it was hard not to be mesmerised by the beauty inside.

“No,” Junhui said, “although I’m beginning to wish I had.”

“You like it, then?”

“Please, Jeon-ssi, you don’t need to ask. It’s exquisite.”

“Wonwoo is fine,” he said quickly, rushing to relieve the air of its formality. “I’m glad you think so. Have you been to the Korean quarter before?”

“Of course.” Junhui swallowed. “If I hadn’t, well, there’d be no way I’d be talking to you now.”

“That begs the question, how does a Sichuanese opera singer speak so many languages? Where did you pick them up?”

“Here and there, with practice. I wanted to avoid being seen as a stranger here, which is hard when Shanghai is an amalgamation of strangers. But you know how it is, the Cantonese Native Place Associations hate the Mandarin speaking ones and vice versa, the Shanghaiers hate anyone who doesn’t speak Shanghainese so we all get charged double by them, and then the Western foreigners won’t even let us on their property. When you think about it like that, it’s worth it to know all the languages and pretend you’re part of the in-group, even if it’s just to halve your costs,” Junhui said, his answer only fuelling Wonwoo’s curiosity. Here and there, even with practice, didn’t produce speakers of foreign languages who had as little issues in fluency, vocabulary, or accent as Junhui did.

Wonwoo regarded him and his adeptness with Western cutlery in the way a mathematician might look at a complicated equation, filled with a determination to solve the conundrum. “Does that mean you were with the troupe as a child?”

Junhui hummed. “I’m surprised you didn’t know. Face changing is always passed from father to eldest son. This was the only path for me as soon as I was born.”

“What happens if the eldest is a daughter? Or if there are no sons?”

“That would be like ending the line. Face changing is treated as a life-or-death secret. Families would never willingly pass the secrets onto a daughter, who might marry into another family and pass the knowledge on to them. So, as the rules go, just have sons,” Junhui said wryly. “What about you? What do you do for a day job that gives you perks like this?”

Wonwoo’s eyes slowly lifted up from his plate to Junhui’s face. He put down his fork and kept eye contact with him longer than may have been strictly comfortable, but Junhui didn’t look away either, which Wonwoo took as implicit permission to continue. “Perks? Well…I suppose money is a perk. What I do is way less interesting. I work with antiques. Appraisals, trades, buying and selling. That sort of thing. I guess when you’re moving old valuables there can be a bit of money involved.”

“Antiques? Like old vases and things? How’d you end up in that business?” Junhui asked.

“From childhood too, if you’d believe it. I really enjoyed reading as a kid and the smell of old books, so I began collecting them. I ended up with more than one copy of a few, sold them off, built up connections. From those connections, someone told me they’d pay a hefty price if I would search up rare volumes for them, and thus a whole business was born. Wasn’t hard to expand to other things after that.”

“An entrepreneurial youth,” Junhui mused.

“Only accidentally, I assure you.” Wonwoo laughed softly and felt himself go warm at the look Junhui gave him.

“It sounds nice,” was the quiet reply. Junhui’s voice was low in pitch as he spoke. “This must be what being a society lady with a wealthy husband is like. She gets treated to nice meals while he does all the work.”

Though made to sound like a joke, the words had Wonwoo sitting up in his chair immediately, staring intently at Junhui with an accelerated heart rate. “Oh,” he said, trying for an appearance of casualness. “Is that what you’re looking for? A rich husband?”

Junhui opened his mouth without a response, the wind knocked out of him and along with it, his bravado. Lips still parted, his gaze shifted around them, checking to see if anyone had been paying attention and accidentally overheard. The tables at Le Bel Eté were set up to avoid that kind of intrusion of privacy, although Junhui didn’t know that, and the rise of panic was visible in the way his back stiffened and the brightness in his face dimmed.

Under the floor-length table cloth, Wonwoo nudged Junhui’s foot with his own, drawing his attention toward him. He tilted his head and flattened his lips, eyes blinking slowly and infrequently.

Junhui took the assurance for what it was. He leaned forward and asked tightly, “Are you offering?”

“That wasn’t already obvious?” Wonwoo placed a hand over his chest and pretended to be hurt, drawing a sharp bark of laughter from Junhui, who calmed with the return to the joking nature of their banter. Wonwoo smiled.

 

 

 

 

“I find it difficult to believe that you wouldn’t hire professionals to do this sort of thing. I’m not exactly certified in either language,” Junhui said, his voice quietening upon entry to the antique store. Inside, carvings and chairs, paintings and porcelain sat within locked glass containers, or behind roped barriers. The décor, rosewood flooring and dark but bare walls, commanded attention to the feature of the shop: its antiques. There was reverence in the air here, and it made Junhui go quiet quite quickly.

“You’re right, there are professional translators, but hiring them costs money. Besides, I don’t want you to do any real translation work, I just wanted you to come look at something.”

“Look at something? You called me across the river to look at something,” Junhui said disbelievingly.

“Well, I also thought it’d be a chance for you to see the store, since I know where you work already but you’ve never been here before.”

Wonwoo swung open the gate to lead them beyond the front counter, and though Junhui hesitated, he followed obediently behind him through the door, down the hallway, and into one of the larger backrooms where Wonwoo held objects still being appraised or otherwise not for sale. A rolled-up tube sat on the main work desk, and Wonwoo gestured at Junhui to unfurl it. The roll unveiled a painting done by hand on a thin silk screen depicting a face changer morphing through several different masks.

“It’s beautiful,” Junhui said, speaking down toward the silk. He was unable to lift his head or his eyes, which remained roaming over the minute brushwork and gorgeous colours.

“Isn’t it? I thought of you when I saw the subject material and wanted you to see it before it gets packed up.”

“Packed up? Are you selling it to someone?” Junhui asked.

“No, I’m keeping these for a gallery owner coming down from the north who I promised to get a first look. He’s having a bit of difficulty making it into the city, so the rest are at home instead of taking up space here.”

“There’s more of them? Can I see them?”

“Not of face changing, no, but the same artist painted several silk screens I was able to acquire.”

“Still,” Junhui said, “they’re beautiful.”

“You think so?” Wonwoo murmured, re-rolling the painting. He stored it in a protective tube and handed it to Junhui to hold. “Well, come on then, let’s go see them.”

The shop was within walking distance of his home; this had been an important factor Wonwoo considered during the house hunting process, and though a realtor suggested a property where shopfront and residence were connected, he felt firmly that the two aspects of his life should be kept separate. If he lived in the same building, the antiques would work their way through all his living spaces, cutting off the rest of his life in favour of his career.

Additionally, Wonwoo had wanted a large house, some place that he could have his own garden, and to afford an estate like that, he would have to live separate from the vendor streets. The glory and effort of the detached home was worth it seeing the wide-eyed expression on Junhui’s face.

“You live here?”

“It’d be a little bit odd if I took you to a stranger’s house, wouldn’t it? Come inside.”

He let Junhui into the study and left him there with the five other paintings while he returned down to the storage room to reorganize the things there that had arrived the night before. The space remained abundant, but difficult to navigate without risk of bumping into something now, as everything was moved rather hastily. Nothing good organization couldn’t fix, however.

“So this is where you’ve been hiding,” Junhui said from the doorway.

“Sorry, have you been waiting long?”

“No, I re-rolled the paintings and started looking for you but I guess you were pretty caught up in your work, huh?”

“I didn’t mean to be such a bad host,” Wonwoo said apologetically.

Junhui shrugged. “It’s fine. I don’t think I need constant supervision.” He laughed. “Are you hungry at all?”

“I could eat. Have someplace in mind?”

“Someplace? When there’s a perfectly operational kitchen in your house? We can cook here.”

Wonwoo shook his head. “Someone comes in to make breakfast in the morning, but otherwise there usually aren’t meals unless it’s the weekend or if I ask specifically.”

“Well,” Junhui amended. “Then I’ll cook.”

Junhui took over the kitchen like it was his own, finding knives and pots and pans with ease. He cooked efficiently, a bit heavy-handed with the spices, with ingredients and utensils Wonwoo didn’t even know he owned. They ate perpendicular to each other at the dining table, and Wonwoo found the food so delicious he devoured most of an entire dish by himself. Junhui deposited stir-fried vegetables on his rice, looking at him the way a mother might look at a young child who was ignoring their greens.

Afterward, when the plates were stacked together (Junhui had offered to wash them, but Wonwoo eventually convinced him to leave them because he paid for help for a reason), Wonwoo gained a fond expression. “That was nice,” he teased lightly, “Must be what it’s like to have a wife waiting at home with a home-cooked dinner every day.”

“Don’t get used to it. I’m way too busy to stay inside a house all day long, and definitely not a woman, much less a wife.” One of Junhui’s eyebrows was cocked up and his gaze was a bit questioning.

“A poor joke then,” Wonwoo relented. “Although, with regards to our conversation yesterday. I meant what I said.”

Junhui’s eyebrow fell back down and crossed with his other in worry. He bit his lower lip and took shaking breaths while looking at Wonwoo, eyes scared and tentative. He released his lip and asked, “What, exactly, did you say?”

“If you want a rich husband…” Wonwoo began, reaching for Junhui’s hand. “I don’t mind that you’re a man. Prefer it, even.” He leaned forward, eyes focused downward on Junhui’s lips, which were shiny with grease from the cooking oil. Their fingers interlocked, and just like the first time they touched, Wonwoo felt sparks where their skin brushed. He inhaled sharply through his nose.

“Yeah?” Junhui asked. He looked at him.

Wonwoo’s eyes fluttered closed, but he could feel how near Junhui was by the soft breath tickling his cheek. After a tantalizingly long wait, Wonwoo finally felt Junhui’s other hand grip at his shoulder, and the soft press of lips against his own. He remained stock still while Junhui shifted his head and deepened the kiss, licked, and sucked, and even grazed at Wonwoo’s lips with his teeth. It was taking all Wonwoo had not to moan into Junhui’s mouth, although he responded with enthusiasm, and held him close with his palm on Junhui’s back.

Then, Junhui pulled away and waited for Wonwoo to open his eyes to speak. “Goodnight, Wonwoo. I think I’ll be seeing you soon.” He patted Wonwoo’s hand and pulled out of his grasp, leaving Wonwoo achingly aroused and alone in his own kitchen.

 

 

 

 

Seungcheol was putting out a cigarette when Wonwoo arrived at Sichuan House this time. It seemed that being early was Seungcheol’s modus operandi, perhaps to scout out the area in advance and make sure never to be caught off guard. “See? Shipment arrived safe, got to you safe, money transferred safe, everything gone smoothly. You needn’t have worried.”

“Just because nothing did go wrong doesn’t mean nothing will ever go wrong,” Wonwoo said, slightly annoyed at having to be the practical one.

In a sarcastically formal tone, Seungcheol replied, “Everything is already going wrong, Jeon-ssi." He sighed and sunk back in his seat, reaching his arm over the table to tap his cigarette against the ashtray. "Think about it. Tianjin? Taken. Beijing? Taken. The IJA are circling just outside Shanghai every day. Every time a goddamn plane flies over head, I think to myself, this is it, the air raids are starting, and I shall burn to death. If not us then it is Nanjing, or surely Chongqing. We are, all of us, moments from a horrific death.”

Wonwoo pushed the standard dessert fare away from him. Even the sight of his teacup gave him nausea at Seungcheol’s words. “If we’re that close to losing, why are we doing all of this? Isn’t it for naught?”

“Is it? There are some of us who don’t want to go down without a fight. As for the non-violent part of the resistance…our history is in those ugly painted pots we transfer to you, Wonwoo. Our ancestors’ blood, sweat, and tears built up over the years, and with generations, to create the kind of experience and know-how that lets them produce unique pottery the rest of the world could never hope to replicate.” Seungcheol swallowed his poison-tested tea in two gulps and planted the cup firmly back into its saucer with a solid noise. “That’s bigger than you, or me, or our loved ones. That’s our people, our culture, the entire Korean race. Sitting in your storerooms.”

“And? Do you want me to keep them there? I can’t hold that many items indefinitely, you know.”

Seungcheol waved a hand and lit up another smoke. “Keep some of them, if you like. Sell the ones you can find good homes for – you know, other Koreans, or museums that’ll keep them from being destroyed.”

“Their price?”

“You paid for them,” Seungcheol said.

Wonwoo tilted his head. “In a manner of speaking, I suppose.”

He clapped loudly at the end of the performance, and Seungcheol disappeared into the crowd before Wonwoo had even stood up. This time, the matron didn’t even bother asking before unlocking the door leading back to where the performers normally got prepared, and Wonwoo found Junhui’s room easily.

“No flowers?” Junhui asked, gazing at Wonwoo’s reflection in his mirror. There was still a layer of unremoved paint on his face, but his hair was pinned to the top of his head again in a messy bun, and he’d changed out of his costume into a thin white shirt and some trousers, the changshan lying over the back of a chair.

“Yes flowers,” Wonwoo replied, producing a thick red cloth, folded into the shape of a rose, a pattern taken from an old fabric manual with yellow pages that crumbled if not held right. It had taken him the better part of an evening to follow the instructions and make something reasonably presentable.

“Wow,” Junhui said. “Wow...Wonwoo, I...Thank you.” He took the rose and placed it carefully against the edge of one of the side mirrors, propped up on a little groove in the wooden panelling holding the glass up. “Does this make you my patron now?”

Wonwoo shook his head, and bent down to lift Junhui’s chin. “You wanted a rich husband, remember? Much better than a patron, I think.”

This time, when they kissed, Junhui wound his arms behind Wonwoo’s neck, holding him closer instead of stationary. Wonwoo’s neck muscles tightened at the angle, and he lifted Junhui up to help him sit on the vanity table instead of the chair with his back against the centre mirror, the original objects occupying the table shoved every which way to make room.

He eventually moved away from Junhui’s lips, as delicious as they were, to trail a line of kisses down his neck. His tongue swirled in the dip between Junhui’s collarbones, and Junhui tilted his chin up to give him better access to the soft and sensitive skin there.

“Like I said, better than a patron, I would think.”

Junhui hissed and pulled Wonwoo’s head back down toward him.

Wonwoo laughed and batted Junhui’s hands away, sinking down into the wooden chair himself so that he was sitting at eye level with Junhui’s navel. He moved to pull Junhui’s trousers down, which took some cooperative shimmying, and then, finally, he came face to face with Junhui’s half-hard cock. It did not take much coaxing to get it to full mast, rather, only a few gentle strokes from his hand and Junhui was rising, the weight of him thick and heavy in Wonwoo’s palm.

“You don’t think this is a little improper here?” Junhui asked him thickly.

He didn’t reply with his words, but by pushing his lips over Junhui’s cock until his length filled Wonwoo’s entire mouth, right up until his lips nearly touched the base of it. The suddenness must have taken Junhui off-guard because a hand quickly and firmly threaded into Wonwoo’s hair, and remained there while Wonwoo bobbed up and down between Junhui’s legs, holding onto his firm thighs for leverage.

All too soon, Wonwoo sensed Junhui’s abdomen tightening and he released his dick. “You don’t think that’s a little improper here?” he teased, mouthing wetly against Junhui’s balls.

“Please,” Junhui whined.

“Please what?”

“Please, Wonwoo, I don’t even know how to say it.”

Wonwoo took pity on him, and returned to suck Junhui’s cock with hollowed cheeks. This time, when Junhui’s breathing got too ragged, his fingers curling painfully against Wonwoo’s scalp, Wonwoo continued to suck, and he sucked until hot come was hitting the back of his throat.

 

 

 

 

Other than the first wealthy husband joke, Wonwoo had grown accustomed to being the person who initiated anything – whether that was dinner arrangements or otherwise. So it was to his utter surprise that only days later, Junhui showed up outside the store sometime around sunset.

“Closing up for the night?” Junhui asked, leaning casually against a lamppost in a black changshan that reached all the way down to his ankles.

“Something you wanted to buy?” Wonwoo asked, turning the key back the other way inside the lock and pushing open the door again.

“No,” Junhui replied, “but I wouldn’t mind seeing what’s in the backroom.”

As soon as Wonwoo closed the door, Junhui was on him, kissing at his neck in a way that was sure to bruise the next morning and force Wonwoo into finding some kind of high-collared outfit to cover up the redness.

“Some kind of special occasion?” Wonwoo whispered, one hand on Junhui’s hip, the other squeezing at the round of Junhui’s ass. He didn’t have the energy to ask any louder, or the self-control. It was dizzying, the way Junhui was kissing him, too much but in a way that he never wanted it to stop.

“Didn’t seem fair,” Junhui said, between nips at Wonwoo’s neck, “that I was sitting there blushing while doing my make-up because of the memories I had while you were sitting here at work, bored and without any reminder.”

Wonwoo moaned, uncertain if it was from Junhui’s hand against the crotch of his pants or the effect of what he was saying.

“So I thought I’d come by, and share the wealth, you know? Give you some memories here as well so you never feel alone.” He guided them walking backward until the backs of his thighs hit the work desk and then fell backward so that he was looking up at Wonwoo with heady lust darkening his eyes almost to the same shade as his pupils, which were blown wide with arousal as well. Junhui yanked at his clothes. The fabric of his changshan pooled around his waist.

“No trousers?” Wonwoo asked hoarsely.

“Seemed like it would only be an obstacle to my purposes,” Junhui said cheekily, before pushing a small vial of oil into Wonwoo’s hands. “I want you to make it hard for me to sit down tomorrow, at least not without remembering this. I want you to be thinking about it when you come to work tomorrow, for it to make it uncomfortable for you to use the table for its actual purposes lest you get hard thinking about the way I look right now.”

And, the charming devil knew, he looked good. He always looked good. But he looked even better losing control, hands gripped so tightly around the edges of the table the veins in his hands and forearms popped out, feet hooked around Wonwoo’s waist and heels digging into his lower back to drive him deeper inside with every thrust. Wonwoo fucked him fast and hard, drawing two orgasms from Junhui, untouched, before he was filling Junhui’s ass with his own come and scooping up whatever had leaked out onto the table for Junhui to lick off his fingers.

 

 

 

 

Rather than satiating his appetite, the sex made Wonwoo hungrier for human touch, and the frequency with which they met was staggering. They fucked everywhere: in Wonwoo’s bedroom on evenings when Junhui wasn’t performing, and in the light of day on weekends, standing in the bathtub, pressed up to the sink, in the hallways, over the staircase railing, on the dining table. Once, while Junhui had been trying to wash vegetables for a stew in the kitchen, Wonwoo had slid inside his still gaping hole from an earlier round in the day and fucked him from behind hard enough to leave bruises on Junhui’s hipbones from where they’d dug into the counter.

And it wasn’t just Wonwoo’s house. Although they’d agreed to stay away from their workplaces after, they counted the flat where Junhui slept on the Sichuan House property as fair game, and Wonwoo had held Junhui up against a wall and pounded into him while the next-door neighbours were asleep. In one great idea, on a drive where Wonwoo was showing Junhui the embankments along the river delta, they found a deserted area after dark, crawled into the backseat, and stripped off their pants so Junhui could ride him into oblivion right in the middle of a wide expanse of nature.

“How many men have you been with before?” Wonwoo asked, fishing for his belt while Junhui did up his trousers.

“If you’re wondering if I’ve ever had mind-blowing sex in the back of a car before, I can assure you the answer is no,” Junhui said wiggling up to tuck himself under Wonwoo’s chin and making it harder still for Wonwoo to dress himself.

“I was just curious.”

“Hmm…well, when you live with only boys from the ages of, let’s see, zero to sixteen, you end up experimenting once or twice.”

“Was that it?” Wonwoo asked. It couldn’t have been. There was no way ‘a few experiments’ ended up with a tongue that could move like Junhui’s.

“Well, a foreigner a few times. They tend not to say anything to anyone else. There was only one other before you that I saw more than once or twice.” He left it at that, and traced a small circle against the side of Wonwoo’s arm. “What about you?”

“Hm?”

“You know. You know my history, so tell me yours.”

Wonwoo looked down and dropped a kiss to Junhui’s brow before re-asserting his chin’s resting spot on top of Junhui’s head. “You’re the only one since I left Korea.”

“When did you leave Korea?”

“Over five years ago.” Wonwoo laughed at Junhui’s incredulity.

“Five years? No wonder you’re so… Well, you know what, good. Because I can’t seem to get enough of you.”

 

 

 

 

“We should stop meeting like this,” Wonwoo joked.

“Three times is enough for one place,” Seungcheol agreed. “Maybe this will be the last time we see each other, but I’d like to ask a favour of you, and if you accept maybe we can meet at another tea house in the future.”

“You already know my policy.”

Seungcheol cleared his throat and offered Wonwoo a cigarette. Wonwoo shook his head, fingers beginning to tap impatiently on the familiar gold and red tablecloth. “Well, I think I might be asking you to bend your policy a little bit.”

“I’m not taking any guns and I’m not killing anyone,” Wonwoo warned.

“I won’t ask something like that of you, when you’ve already been quite helpful. You see, we need someone to act as chaperone for a shipment of pots into Korea this time.”

“In? You’re not…trading them out?”

Seungcheol leaned in. “They’re fakes. Anyway,” he said, sitting back again, “we’ll compensate you handsomely in monetary rewards if you help, of course.”

“It’s nice to have money, Seungcheol, don’t get me wrong. But it’s useless to have a thick wad of cash if you’re too dead to use it. And this? It sounds like a plan that would get me killed.”

“Not killed. I told you, while some of the resistance movement efforts have been less effective, sometimes even futile, the non-violent demonstrations usually work to get people thinking, at the very least. The plans we come up with are razor sharp, police detection-free.”

“Alright then, non-violent? You’re really telling me if I look in your goddamn pots I won’t find hidden bombs or guns or something to blow up the government?”

“No bombs,” Seungcheol confirmed.

Wonwoo shot back, rapid-fire: “Then what’s in the pots? Why are they fake? And why would you need me to accompany the shipment?”

“Easy,” Seungcheol said. “You have no record. No one has records of you. You’re just a professional antique dealer, looking to sell your acquired wares. As for what’s in the pots, we’re using them to distribute messages. Some of them might explain _how_ to build bombs but…”

“Technically no bombs, right? So, that makes it safe? You can’t pay me enough money for something like that, not when the price I pay might be my life.”

Seungcheol pinned him with a steely grimace. “Look, you probably won’t die on this trip. Can I guarantee that without a doubt? No. But I can say that the odds are quite unlikely. On the other hand, the Japanese are attacking China anyway. We thought the gang activity was bad in Shanghai before, but then Japan dropped a bomb on the International Settlement area – on the fucking foreigners! The one group of people we thought would make Shanghai safe from Japanese attack.” He jabbed his index finger into the table and shook his head. “I’m telling you, who knows what’s next. Where they’ll bomb, or how often? The higher ups are already whispering, with things as they are now, the Japanese will take us over any minute and they want to move the provisional government up to Chongqing.”

The fire breather was entering the stage, the jewels in his crown sparkling as the light from the theatre house shone from multiple angles. Wonwoo pondered the issue for a long set.

“Fine,” he ended up saying. “Because we’re friends and I’m grateful. I’ll do it as a favour, but this is the last thing. Ask no more of me.”

“Understood.”

The weight of Wonwoo’s task bore down on him through his plan to surprise Junhui backstage, arriving with weariness and a strange fatigue that hadn’t been there before, even though he’d been sleeping regularly.

“Was a pretty good show today,” Junhui said casually, rubbing off the powder set over his eyes with a heavy cream.

“Yeah,” Wonwoo said helpfully.

“Are you okay?” Junhui asked.

The question seemed to startle Wonwoo out of his reverie, and he saw the room with a fresh pair of eyes. “Do you smoke now?” He asked, a hand suddenly tightening into a fist.

“No? What—oh.” Junhui shook his head, eyes following to where Wonwoo’s other had pointed. “The cigars were a gift from someone in the audience, not for any of us to smoke but…”

“Who. was. it.” Wonwoo could tell that the words were difficult to make out, he was practically growling.

“Huh?”

Wonwoo narrowed his eyes and took a step forward. “Which fucker was the one who gave you the cigars?”

Junhui frowned and waved his hand a little. “Um, like I just said, someone in the audience, I don’t really know. I…Stop looking at me like that Wonwoo! You’re acting like I only spend time with you because you buy me presents or something, which I don’t. I don’t just sleep with anyone who blinks my direction, okay?”

Wonwoo noticed his mistake in that moment, but it was too late.

“God, even though you know me, you know me, and you still look at me like that. I’m not a whore!” Junhui stood, pushed Wonwoo backward, and slammed the door in his face.

 

 

 

 

Despite Wonwoo pleading and knocking on the door with apologies, despite his daily trips to Sichuan House over the next few days, calling Junhui over and over, Junhui was good at keeping himself away. Somehow, he refused Wonwoo’s calls for two weeks straight, unmoved by trinkets or words, and only relenting because of the healing balm of time.

Wonwoo’s spoken and written apologies both were kept on tight collar, not because they weren’t good enough, but because Junhui was a man of action, who believed in changes in behaviour, and not just empty words. Wonwoo was deferential.

In part, it was because Junhui somehow proved his own point. During the two weeks’ worth of time they spent apart, Wonwoo never touched himself. They went from fucking every day, sometimes multiple times a day, to never touching. But Wonwoo wasn’t driven by any primal urges, and never fixated on the missing sex. More than that, he missed the companionship of having someone he saw every day without fail, morning or night depending on what time worked best, someone to lean back on, to have and to hold. Someone, Wonwoo noted with bitter amusement, that was like a spouse. That had been Junhui’s wish first, not his, but after getting a taste of what it was like to be attached to someone who would cook for you, massage your shoulders after a long day, listen to your complaints and sharing their own, it was hard not to notice the absence.

And, perhaps, he felt it more keenly still because of the added weight on his shoulders from the magnitude of his future, a man suddenly forced to come to terms with his own mortality by a wake-up call he desperately held at bay for the better part of a decade. When were the next bombs going to fall? Where were the next bombs drop – would they be on a street he knew, perhaps even his own house? Seungcheol’s voice rang in his ears. Moving the provisional government to Chongqing? It really was becoming the biggest hub in the country, made out especially as a target since the Republic were considering it their home base.

Wonwoo imagined a map with the cities marked off by little red stars, and all of the big names being blown up, right off the map. It was obvious where to focus your energy if you were an enemy of China. Tianjin, Beijing, Nanjing, Shanghai, Chongqing. Bang bang bang bang bang, and they were all gone, wiped off by bombs, mass civilian fear and confusion. And the Chinese, bickering among themselves, were too busy fighting each other to defend themselves against the one common enemy. They’d be picked off, invaded, and restructured like the way the Japanese had occupied Korea, turning the local citizens into second-class sub-humans, rendering Wonwoo’s fleeing of his homeland useless.

Discussing the activities of the provisional government or liberation army with Junhui was out of the question in such explicit terms, but voicing his general concerns might have soothed his nerves. Hearing words of encouragement, however empty, could always lift someone’s spirits.

If that didn’t work, some of Junhui’s gentle teasing might have made him laugh, and in these times, a laugh was worth every penny.

 

 

 

 

“You do know, don’t you?” Junhui asked, voice trembling.

It was the first time they had seen each other since Wonwoo’s insecurities got the best of him and in the interim, Junhui’s tall form seemed to have shrunk. He looked tiny in Wonwoo’s doorway, standing hunched in on himself instead of filling out the shoulders of his jacket.

“I’m sorry,” Wonwoo apologized sincerely. He took a step forward, and Junhui took a hasty step backward, the expression of fear in his body language spreading to his face.

Like a wounded animal, Junhui held his hand close to his neck and refused to meet Wonwoo’s eyes. “Can you answer the question first? You know that you’re the only one, right?”

“Yes, I know. If I used my brain properly…well, how could there be someone else, considering all the time we spend together.” He took a step backward so Junhui could straighten out a bit.

“It’s not the first time someone’s made that insinuation before, you know. Heck, people have even called me that to my face. I think it comes with working in the arts. I don’t know, prostitution doesn’t even seem all that bad, trading sex for money? But for some reason, when you looked at me like that the other day, even without calling me anything, just the thought that I’d do favours for anyone for a simple present…” Junhui trailed off and looked to the side, giving Wonwoo a chance to inspect his profile. He wasn’t sure if he was just imagining it, but it seemed to him like Junhui’s cheeks had deflated. “I think it’s because it felt like you were looking down on me. And it’s not the end of the world when someone else does it but you…it felt too much like you were the rich husband, and I wasn’t sure that I deserved being kept. I guess I was hurt by a lack of faith in myself.”

Wen Junhui was many things. He was an enigmatic man, and a beautiful man, but not someone Wonwoo would have placed as someone who didn’t see their own worth. “And I likewise,” Wonwoo admitted. “I was afraid and jealous that I wasn’t enough.”

With their confessions hanging heavy in the air, the walk to the restaurant Junhui wanted to go to was relatively quiet. They stood a little further from each other than they did in the past, perhaps seen as more proper in society, but the emotional admissions carved a gulf between them.

The restaurant was not one of the fancy places Wonwoo was familiar with. It was small, with rickety chairs and cracked floor tiles, the paint chipping off the walls and bits of porcelain missing from the bowls due to overuse. But the food, piping hot with chili oils and peppers and all kinds of spices, left Wonwoo’s sinuses clearer than they’d ever been before, and in its own way, giving them running noses and leaving them to suck in big gulps of air and water to cool their taste buds, that cleared the air between them as well.

“I’ve never had anything this spicy before,” Wonwoo declared. “It’s delicious.”

“I’m glad,” Junhui said with a small smile. “It’s the best Sichuan food in the city.” He wiped his mouth on a napkin and then added quietly, “The closest thing I’ve ever found to my mom’s cooking.”

“You miss her?”

“Yes, of course,” Junhui glanced at Wonwoo. “Don’t you miss yours?”

Wonwoo tilted his head. “Sometimes.”

Instead of questioning it, Junhui nodded his head in understanding. “Sometimes I miss my mom, sometimes I miss Chongqing, sometimes I miss both, and other times neither.”

After dinner, they returned to the Western half of the city. Now, when they walked, their shoulders gently brushed from time to time, and Wonwoo could quickly loop a finger around one of Junhui’s when their hands passed each other, feeling a bit more daring because of the night. They rounded the public gardens at a quick clip, and the sign made Junhui laugh once more, declaring its use for all…except the Chinese locals.

It was just outside the gardens that they ran into Xu Minghao, Mingyu’s hire with ‘special expertise’, who had overseen the transfer of goods from the Korean ships to Wonwoo’s possession. Interestingly, Minghao greeted both of them, before continuing on his way, and Wonwoo couldn’t suppress his curiosity.

“You know him?” Wonwoo asked.

“I do. He trained for a brief time with the acrobats in our troupe. We did not speak often but I saw him almost daily in training or during mealtimes.”

“Acrobats?”

Junhui hummed. “I suppose, in his line of work, being limber would be helpful in some situations.”

“Ah…” Wonwoo looked away.

“We all have our own way of dealing with, well, other people,” Junhui said, grimacing over his word choices. “For some of us, it means doubling the price on our wares for people who don’t speak the same language as us. For others, the risks are a little bit higher, but when you speak as many languages as I do, I think you come to see that everyone shares a common way of seeking to belong.”

“Weird in this city though, isn’t it? An amalgamation of all kinds of cultures, and people from every possible place. You’d think that would create a group of its own, but we stick to the things we know and…”

“…Refuse to open ourselves to others?” Junhui laughed.

“I may be saying this to the wrong person,” Wonwoo said sheepishly.

When they reached where Wonwoo lived, Junhui hovered in the entranceway.

“Can I just do one thing?” Wonwoo asked.

Junhui stared at him for a moment, and then nodded without asking for specifics.

Wonwoo reached over and pulled him into a hug. It was nothing more, nothing less, and eventually Junhui’s arms found their way to hold onto Wonwoo as well, the two of them standing in the hallway in each other’s embrace. Their bodies fit in a complimentary fashion, and it helped that they were of similar heights, and Wonwoo felt warm all over. You could describe it any number of ways, like two puzzle pieces clicking together, a key sliding into its rightful lock, the last disc in your spine clicking into place. It felt right. Wonwoo melted bonelessly, and Junhui similarly leaned his weight against him, so that the two of them were propping each other up comfortably.

“Stay the night. I just mean, it’s getting late, and I don’t think anyone should be out and about alone at this hour. It’s too dangerous.”

“Okay,” Junhui agreed amicably. He washed first and settled comfortably between Wonwoo’s sheets while waiting.

“Do you mind if I leave this lamp on for a while longer?” Wonwoo asked. “I wanted to just get to the end of this reading.”

Junhui wiggled until his head was in Wonwoo’s lap and he closed his eyes peacefully. “Good, a bedtime story. Read it out loud so I can hear it too.”

 

 

 

 

Wonwoo woke the next morning as soon as the first rays of sunshine flickered through the window and shone inside the room. He opened his eyes, yawned, and stretched out both arms, after carefully extracting one from under Junhui’s neck. The movement was enough to wake Junhui up, nonetheless, and Wonwoo smiled down at the huge doe eyes, with eyelashes batting tiredly at him.

“Did you sleep well?” He asked.

“Mm, still tired,” Junhui whined, and burrowed his face down under the sheets, pressed up to Wonwoo’s side.

“Sleep then.”

Junhui’s head popped back out. “Are you getting up?”

“Yeah, I have quite a bit of stuff to sort out before…Oh, I hadn’t told you yet. I have to return to Korea for a few days.”

“Oh.” Junhui yawned and rubbed his eyes, stretching his back out like a cat. His body was spooned up against Wonwoo’s, his back to Wonwoo’s chest. “That’s why you’ve been so moody recently, isn’t it?”

“Recently?”

“I mean, antsy. I don’t know, I could sense something was off.”

“Yeah, I guess. I’m a little nervous.”

“Because it’ll be dangerous? You have the papers to be living here, but the reason why you’re going back is going to put you in danger isn’t it?” Junhui asked shrewdly.

“Yeah,” Wonwoo assented. It could have been saying too much. But he trusted Junhui, not because Junhui was particularly forthcoming about anything, nor because of the relationship they had. Junhui was simply extremely trusting of him, never asking questions or voicing his suspicions. He simply believed that Wonwoo would make the best choices for the both of them, and that kind of faith could only be repaid with similar faith.

“Do you think sex would help the nerves?”

“Wow.”

“No?”

“Maybe…” Wonwoo allowed.

“Can I confess something? I’m not really asking for your sake. It’s worrying me that you’re worried and now that you’ve confirmed it’s not exactly a safe journey, I’m definitely on edge.”

“What would you like?” Wonwoo asked, rubbing a hand over Junhui’s ass.

“I don’t want to move,” Junhui said in a whiney tone. “But I really want to be fucked.”

“How?”

“Slowly, I think,” Junhui said, before shuddering at the feel of Wonwoo’s fingers brushing against his perineum. “Oh.”

“Oh?”

Wonwoo slid one saliva-slicked finger into Junhui, all the way up to his knuckle, and stroked gently. After a few pushes in and out, he stuck a second finger inside, and keenly felt the way Junhui’s muscles clenched around him. It seemed impossible that he had managed to get his cock inside him so many times when Junhui was so tight.

“You’re going to make me come like this,” Junhui whispered, pushing his ass back against Wonwoo’s hand.

“This is enough?” Wonwoo asked.

“I was depraved for two weeks.”

Wonwoo sighed happily. “You didn’t touch yourself at all?”

“Not once,” Junhui said.

“Good. Me neither.”

They build up a steady rhythm, Junhui rocking backward and Wonwoo maintaining the dip of his fingers until the angle was just right and his fingers didn’t hit Junhui’s prostate, but slid against it on the in and out, with enough pressure to make the sensation accumulated in his stomach, but not hard enough that it made him lose control.

It took a long time to get Junhui off like this, especially because their hands were otherwise occupied by tangling their fingers together, although at one point Wonwoo caved and fitted his knee between Junhui’s legs so he could rut up against his thigh. It was the build of it, slow and torturous, that made it so good, an orgasm that had been a long time coming and also a long time in the making.

“You’re gonna have to fuck me now,” Junhui told him matter-of-factly.

“You think you can get hard again fast enough?” Wonwoo wondered.

Junhui shook his head. “That doesn’t matter. You have to fill me. It’s too empty without your fingers. Want you inside.”

Wonwoo didn’t have to be asked twice.

 

 

 

 

“When you come back,” Junhui said, “I’ll tell you the things you wanted to know the first time we met. Do you remember? You asked me about how an opera singer could speak so many languages and how I’d ended up doing face changing for a living.”

“Okay,” Wonwoo said.

“But that means you have to come back. If you don’t, then I can’t tell you anything.”

“Okay. I’ll always come back to you.”

“Good.”

 

 

 

 

What both of them forgot to ask, was whether Junhui would always come back to Wonwoo.

 

 

 

 

His trip went as well as could have been expected. It exhausted Wonwoo in a mentally taxing way, always watching over his back while trying to pretend that everything was normal, and that left him more frazzled than the physical act of moving the containers.

When he returned to Shanghai, he arranged for dinner at Le Bel Eté with Junhui, but as soon as they arrived, Wonwoo knew immediately that there was something else more pressing that he wanted, and could see a similar reflection in Junhui’s eyes. It had been a long, and this time unwanted, separation for them both, and no sooner had they stepped toward the restaurant entrance than Wonwoo pulled Junhui back into the car and sped home. He sucked and licked and kissed Junhui’s ass for what felt like hours, in lieu of a meal, and when they finished re-exploring each other’s bodies, re-affirming their affections, Wonwoo felt full in a way that he could never achieve just by eating food.

“Will you stay?”

Junhui sighed. “I have a performance tomorrow, but yes, I’ll stay the night.” A few beats later he said, “I missed you.”

Wonwoo pressed his face against Junhui’s neck, and let the skin there absorb some of his voice. “I missed you too much. I could barely function day to day. Go back with me. I have the money, we can live somewhere far from everyone else, where the government will leave us alone if we pay them to.”

“I’m not sure that kind of government system is any better than the one here.”

“But at least it’s a government. Staying in Shanghai is untenable, with the constant bombardments, whether from the sky or on the ground. I never knew if you’d been hit in one the attacks or…” Wonwoo shuddered. It was too much to think about.

“Stayed alive, living in a city unoccupied by Japan. If we go to Korea, we’re at their whim. What if one day they don’t think the money is enough anymore? Do you know what they can do? I’m sure you know – your entire homeland has been subjugated by them.” Junhui shook his head. “If you want to leave Shanghai, why don’t we move to Chongqing instead? The lease is running out on the theatre building and I think the troupe is moving back there anyway.”

“It’s not safe,” Wonwoo protested, shaking his head. “They’ve bombed Shanghai, they’ve bombed Nanjing. The only major city left that hasn’t been attacked by them is Chongqing.”

Junhui pulled away sharply. “That’s an awful thing to say.”

“I’m sorry. You’re right, it was careless, but you also know, surely, that it seems like it’ll be the next target. Yes, living in Korea means living under their thumb, but at least it’s safe. At least they already think it is under their thumb, so they don’t have to quash it with too much force.”

“The Japanese and the Nationalists and the Communists are all part of the same gang. All of them would kill anyone who dares to oppose them, shilling ideology to disguise their thirst for power, at the expense of people’s lives.” Junhui turned his palm up and then down. “I can’t. I can’t abandon my hometown, nor the opera. I can’t just run away.”

 

 

 

 

Although Wonwoo and Junhui did not make plans for the day after, he saw him anyway. It was early in the morning when he received the call, not later than six. It was the theatre number who attempted to reach him, according to the call operator, and the conversation was quite short.

“Come,” Junhui had said, and so Wonwoo went.

Junhui was sitting on the floor of his dorm room when Wonwoo found him, a bottle of white liquor between his knees.

“He died,” Junhui said. “He died,” he repeated.

When Junhui was born, his mother and father were living together in housing provided by the theatre troupe. Junhui was taken with the other first sons to be raised together and produce the face changers that their family was experienced in. But his biological father was kicked out not long thereafter, punished for ‘tricking the matron’, as the official records went, and that put his mother on the streets, while Junhui was stuck in the training academy. And it was his biological father whose death had trickled down to Junhui in the recent news.

“My stepfather was from Dalian. His father was ethnically Korean, and he ran away from his family to marry my stepfather’s mother, who was Chinese. My stepfather is why I can speak Korean. Because his father had taught him first.”

“This story bodes well for us eloping, doesn’t it?” Wonwoo joked.

“Don’t be silly,” Junhui said brusquely. “They had the advantage of being a man and a woman, and neither of them were obligated to produce a male heir. And plus, we’re not related by blood.”

His tone toppled anything Wonwoo might have tried to add.

“I don’t know why I’m even crying,” Junhui wailed. “That man…He was my biological father, but I never knew him. Where did he go afterward that he was living for this long without saying anything to my mother or I? I hate him. I hate that he gave me this birthright, and that I had to learn this stupid thing and leave my mother. If it weren’t for him I’d never have left Chongqing in the first place, and wouldn’t always be worried about ‘the next step’ or my future.”

“Sure,” Wonwoo said lightly, placing an arm on Junhui’s shoulder. “But you’d also never have met me.” And he held him close until the sniffling subsided and Junhui fell fast asleep.

 

 

 

 

Despite the performances ending late, and occasional early morning practices, Junhui spent the next few nights living at Wonwoo’s. On days when he didn’t have a show he waited for Wonwoo at home with cooked meals, and at night, show or no show, they fucked slowly on Wonwoo’s down mattress. Things were good. They were happy.

 

 

 

 

But fate had a way of destroying happiness in those times, sought it out and snuffed it at its origin, daring anyone else to try and achieve inner peace while the entire rest of the world prepared to go to war.

 

 

 

 

“Aren’t you going to eat?” Wonwoo asked, waving his chopsticks in Junhui’s direction, and the lack of food, plates, or cutlery on that side of the table.

Junhui sighed. “I think I can get full just from watching you eat. But I snacked while you were gone and now I’m not hungry.”

“Are we married now?” Wonwoo joked. “The rich husband and his domestic…househusband at last?”

“It’s nice that the dwindling days of my youth can be spent like this,” Junhui said, chin in his hands and a smile on his face.

“If aging is what you’re so worried about, you don’t have to be. I promise that I’ll still want you even when your butt is wrinkly and saggy.”

Junhui rapped his knuckles on Wonwoo’s head. “Hate to break out the science to you, but no matter how many times we do it, we’re not going to produce a son. And like I said, father to son...”

“We can adopt one,” Wonwoo said.

“I don’t think that’s how this works.” Junhui was frowning now, and the reality of his seriousnesss finally suck in.

Wonwoo stood up quickly, and flung an arm out to the side. “Are you…really? You’re still planning on going back to Chongqing and find some woman you don’t love to bear you an eldest son, and pretend that this never happened.”

“What do you mean still? I told you that was the condition of the way I live. The very first night we went for dinner, I told you, first born male. Not even a daughter is enough.”

“And I’m not enough either, am I?” Wonwoo asked, voice cracking over the last syllable.

Junhui didn’t answer.

“I love you. Come away with me.”

“I can’t.”

This time, it was Wonwoo’s turn to be silent.

“Look, I think I’d better sleep over at my place tonight. If you want to end this now then fine, so be it. I think we still have some time left, though, so if you’re still…Well, you made reservations at tomorrow’s dinner so…” For the first time in a long time, Junhui went back to Sichuan House to sleep.

 

 

 

 

The day was February 19th. The year was 1938.

In the morning, Wonwoo took his Western style breakfast in the backroom of the store, and though it was well-prepared, it was prepared for two, and the sight of two sets of cutlery left him with no appetite. He picked up the newspaper that was laid out neatly took in the front page, and bolted out of his seat. He was still shoving his hands through the sleeve of his coat on his way out the door, speed walking to his car. Behind him, the discarded newspaper fluttered to the ground, loudly proclaiming its headline: Chongqing Bombed By Japanese.

The Sichuan Provincial Guild, when Wonwoo got there, was quiet and sombre. People on the streets scuttled from one building to the next, hiding in the shadows the walls cast, as if they didn’t want to be seen on the streets.

And though he combed through every room, Sichuan House was as empty as chest with his heart carved out from it.

“They went back. As a group, this morning. They are Chongqingers after all, can you blame them?” The haggard man who owned the restaurant across the street stood outside in the courtyard, speaking to him in accented Mandarin, a lit cigarette between his first two fingers.

“Went back? Toward the bombing? What if the Japanese strike again?”

“They want to find their family to make sure they’re alright. Besides, these days Shanghai is an even more dangerous place.” He spat on the ground to the side of him and looked back up, tilting his chin. “You interested in buying the building?”

Wonwoo shook his head, hands shaking. “No,” he said, but the rest of his words got stuck in his throat. He squeezed his fingernails into the flesh of his palms, confirming that everything was real. He swallowed. “No, thank you. I’m only interested in one thing.”

 

 

 

 

 

Epilogue

At the family plot in Changwon, among rows of men buried side-by-side with their wives, lies the final resting place of Jeon Wonwoo, brother, friend, and son; never married.

In 1940, the Provisional Government of the Republic of Korea moved their headquarters from Shanghai to Chongqing, which was at the time the capital of the Republic of China and a municipality of Sichuan province.

From these facts we can deduce one of two things happened. Either first, that Wonwoo moved to Chongqing and, with the help of his Liberation Army informants, found Junhui, and died never married because marriage cannot replace love, the most important thing he shared with Wen Junhui. Or second, that Wonwoo moved to Chongqing and, despite the help of his friends in the Liberation army, never found Junhui, and died never married because he never stopped trying.

In fact, neither is quite true.

By the time Wonwoo found Junhui and upended his business to move to Sichuan, Junhui had found his stepfather's home burned to the ground by the bombings. Not weeks later, his brother's family asphyxiated while hiding in a tunnel shelter from an overhead raid. Without any living family remaining, and with the castigation from the opera troupe elders who became his de facto family, Junhui was forced to marry for the sake of a male heir. The marriage was loveless, but the opera was Junhui's only hold on living life after losing everyone he did love. He had only words of apology for Wonwoo when they finally met again, and no heart of his own to offer.

On his return to Korea, Wonwoo spent a day in Shanghai waiting for his ship to port. The city, now completely under Japanese control, exhibited nothing of the extravagance it had flaunted in the past, now a militarized town whose lavish parties were tampered by injustices and suppressed by fear. Sichuan House's once glossy exterior has faded to dullness, its doors and windows boarded up, and plant life grew between cracks where no plants were meant to grow.

He retraced the familiar path from the opera house to the Yangtze, his footsteps disappearing behind him in a gust of sand, dust, and wind.

 

_我知道 那些夏天_  
_I know, those summer days,_  
_就像你一样回不来_  
_just like you, cannot return_  
_我也不会再对谁满怀期待_  
_And I will never be full of expectation for anyone else again._  
_我知道 这个世界_  
_I know, in this world_  
_每天都有太多遗憾_  
_Every day there are too many regrets_  
_所以你好_  
_So hello_  
_再见_  
_Goodbye_  
_— Anhe Bridge, Song Dongye_

**Author's Note:**

> with thanks to anyone who had to watch my all-nighter breakdowns trying to finish these goddamn things ♡
> 
> edit to note the title is loosely translated/borrowed from the poem 長干行 by 李白


End file.
